After much public outcry over his pardoning of Miron Cozma, Iliescu today revoked his decision. Cozma was arrested again in Timisoara today. Apparently, he tried to flee the country after hearing that his pardon had been revoked. There’s a clip that’s been playing over and over again on the news — it shows [...]

New Europe?Late Thursday night, the European Council approved, as widely expected, the Commission’s recommendation to open membership negotiations with Turkey, largely without imposing additional conditions to be met prior to the beginning of the talks on October 3, 2005. “The time to start negotiations with Turkey has come,” Commission President Jos? Manuel Barroso said. Council [...]

… through the lens of daily newspapers. Shamelessly stolen in its entirety from Turkish Torque, whose sharp commentary deserves a huge audience. (Not that we can provide one, but that does not make the Torquester any less deserving.)
Who reads what?
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country. (Yeni Safak?)
2. [...]

The European Union has assumed responsibility for the peacekeeiping mission in Bosnia.
A new force called EUFOR that numbers about 7,000 troops will enforce the Dayton peace agreement that ended the bloody Bosnian war in 1995.
The change from NATO to EU on Thursday begins nearly nine years after NATO deployed 60,000 forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, [...]

The Dutch EU presidency seems to be putting the finishing touches to the summit preparations for 15/16 December. One of the major items on the agenda: decision time on opening negotiations with Ankara about Turkey’s EU membership.

Read more… or Read more right here… [...]

One country over from the Ukraine, Romania is also about to have elections. Election day is tomorrow, Sunday the 28th.
Romania is a sort of borderland right now. It joined NATO last year, and it’s an EU candidate member, with full membership scheduled (at the moment) in 2007. The economy has been [...]

Following up on some of the comments to this post from Doug Muir.
I’m with the other Doug on long-term prospects. As far as I know, no Western European state exists with an indigenous minority population approaching 30 percent.
Thus, the EU is asking the Macedonians (that is, the inhabitants of the former FYROM, regardless of [...]

This blog doesn’t usually resound with praise for the far-sighted wisdom and diplomatic cunning of the Bush administration. (Neither does my own blog, for that matter.)
So I thought I’d be a bit contrarian, and point to a recent episode where Bush, or Colin Powell, or undersecretary of state Marc Grossman, or /someone/, [...]

Amidst all the fanfare about negotiations opening on Turkey’s membership, we shouldn’t lose sight of other things that are in the pipeline. EU enlargement commissioner G?nter Verhuegen has just given Bulgaria and Romania the green light for a January 2007 target date.
?For the year 2007 we feel that accession may be appropriate and these [...]

The European Commission has recommended that accession talks for Turkey should begin, but hasn’t laid out any dates for the process:
Commission officials are reporting on the progress Turkey has already made, along with Bulgaria and Romania.
The final decision on Turkey rests with the leaders of all 25 EU member states in December - with accession [...]